Possessive Phrases Research Articles

Izafet as a Means of Expressing the Functional-Semantic Category of Measure in the Yakut Language

The current paper is the first to consider possessive (one-suffix) phrases in the functional-semantic aspect, designating spatial measures (level, distance, length, size, time, etc.) in Yakut. In the Yakut and Turkic linguistics, the study of the category of belonging, namely, isafet, has a long history. But possessive constructions based on the isafet have not been presented until now as a means of expressing the functional-semantic category of measure. The purpose of the article is to identify and analyse the structural and semantic features of possessive constructions expressing measure in the Yakut language. To achieve this goal, we considered the history of the study of possessive constructions in Turkic and Yakut linguistics and analyzed the structure and semantics of constructions to determine the carrier of quantitative semes in each construction. The object of the study is the determinative phrases (isafet) formed morphologically, namely with the help of the affix of the 3rd person singular -a (-e, -o, -o), -ta (-te, -to, -to). The main methods used in the study were systematization, analysis of syntactic units, morphemic description (glossing) of a lexical unit, descriptive method and semantic analysis to identify the functions of possessive constructions. As a result of the systematization in terms of functional grammar, three main groups have been identified: possessive constructions with special lexemes for measurement – classifiers, comparative postpositions saҕa, kurduk’, as if with the affix of the instrumental case -nan, also the affix of the dative case -ar, -gar. The classifier in the isafet is an indicator that allows us to more clearly express parametric data in the language. Phrases with postpositional-case components express intersubject relations “the subject and its part”, with the affix of the dative case – locative relations. With the help of functional and semantic studies of language or speech, we penetrate into the national system of language behavior, a specific worldview and thinking process of the people.

Kinship terms in Stau

Abstract This paper presents a comprehensive synchronic study of Stau kinship terms, offering a detailed analysis of their classifications and characteristics. Stau kinship terms are categorized into vocative and referential/possessive forms. Vocative kinship terms follow the intonation pattern of other vocative phrases, particularly barytonesis, which involves stress and intonation shifting from the second syllable to the first. The paper explores the distinctions within younger sibling relationships, dividing kinship terms into male Ego and female Ego categories based on the sex of the connecting relative. The kinship prefix æ-, commonly found in Qiangic languages, is exclusively used in vocative and referential/possessive kinship terms referring to older kin (both male and female). The study also identifies specific vocative and referential kinship terms that describe dyads of kinship relationships, similar to Tibetic languages like the Amdo dialects spoken in Stau-speaking areas. Stau maintains a sex-based distinction for kinship terms across all generations. Referential/possessive kinship terms in Gen−1 and Gen−2 differentiate between lineal and collateral relationships, while in vocative terms, only Gen−1 distinguishes between lineal and collateral relatives. Gen+1 consanguineal vocative kinship terms exhibit distinctions for lineal/collateral and matrilateral/patrilateral relationships. However, the matrilateral/patrilateral distinction is neutralized in Gen+1 affinal vocative kinship terms. Gen+1 affinal referential/possessive kinship terms differentiate matrilateral and patrilateral relationships when using a possessive phrase, but not when using the simple base term. Age relative to Ego plays a distinct role in Gen0 kinship terms, both vocative and referential/possessive. Sibling terms are differentiated from cousin terms in Gen0 referential/possessive terms using the tʰɛv(=ɡə ŋə-rə) ‘is a relative’ copula phrase. Regarding cousin kinship typology, Stau aligns with the Hawaiian type in the vocative and the Eskimo type in the referential. The Hawaiian type serves as the foundational basis due to shared roots in both vocative and referential contexts. For Gen+1 terms, Stau follows the Sudanese system, each consanguineal kin with their own term. Gen−1 terms follow the Eskimo system.

Reflexive or Not? Choosing a Possessive in Bulgarian, Czech, and Russian

ABSTRACT This article investigates the competition between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns in 1PSG contexts in Bulgarian, Czech, and Russian. Using comparable web corpora, I assessed the distributional frequencies of both possessives and, drawing on the theoretical framework of corpus-based variationist linguistics, modeled linguistic factors favoring one variant. The results show that in Czech and Russian, as well as in Bulgarian short possessives, the reflexive pronoun is the default option to indicate the possessive relation with the subject. The non-reflexive is used when other possible antecedents are present in the sentence, when the possessum is animate, and when the possessive phrase is embedded and precedes the finite verb. It is argued that speakers of these Slavic languages obey the economy principle by preferring the dedicated reflexive form for expressing the reflexive meaning and resort to the non-reflexive form only when they need to avoid ambiguity, minimize processing costs, or signal additional pragmatic meanings.

Referential Dependencies in Turkish: Some Novel Arguments on the Binding of Kendisi, O and Pro

The Turkish reflexive kendisi (self-3SG.POSS) deviates from Principle A of the Binding Theory and from the Minimalist movement approaches to referential dependencies. This paper concurs with Kornfilt (2001) and provides further support that kendi-si is preceded by a null possessor (pro) which influences its binding but argues that kendisi is not a reflexive. Kendisi’s distribution changes when its possessor is a null pronominal (pro) or an overt pronominal (o, ‘she/he/it’). It is claimed that pro and o are not the null and overt counterparts of the same pronominal. Pro and o show the same distribution only in (in)direct object positions. In possessive phrases and subject positions, their distributions differ. Following Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) and Safir (2004), it is argued that pro is a weak pronoun which only refers to an antecedent mentioned in the context. But o is a strong pronoun and can make independent reference and function as a topic shifter.

Possessor Extraction in English and Danish

Both English and Danish are Germanic languages which are said to require pied-piping of possessive phrases when they are moved, for example in questions like Whose computer do you think this is? If pied-piping is not required in such movements, an alternative way of asking the same question could be Who do you think’s computer this is? (or perhaps, for Danish readers, Hvem er dets computer? [Who is it’s computer?] might be acceptable), where the possessor who/hvem has been extracted from the possessive phrase whose computer/hvis computer, leaving the rest of the possessive DP material -’s/-s computer behind. This type of movement is called possessor extraction (PE), and Davis (2021) provides evidence for the possibility of it in colloquial English for some speakers. This article is a pilot study of Danish PE, suggesting initial generalizations and comparing these to Davis’s (2021) generalizations about English PE.

The evolution of possessive phrases and the rise of DP in French, Spanish, and Portuguese

This paper deals with the evolution of nominal expressions with prenominal possessives in Romance languages. Until now, the prevalent view has been that their historical development follows one of the two diachronic paths: either they stop co-occurring with determiners (French, Spanish) or they start requiring their presence (European Portuguese). One common analysis associates the first case with a transition from a modifier to a determiner semantics of possessives and the second with a retention of a modifier semantics (e.g. Alexiadou 2004). It has also been observed, however, that documented Romance languages each make use of two morphologically distinct possessive paradigms, the so-called short and long forms, and, at least for French, that the short forms co-occur with determiners in historical documents less frequently than the long ones (Butet 2018). We adduce novel quantitative evidence from treebanks of French, Spanish, and Portuguese to the latter observation and show for the first time that the two paradigms followed very different evolutionary trajectories: frequency of determiners goes monotonically up with long possessives and goes up and then down with the short possessives across the three languages. Given these new data, we argue that the only point of evolutionary divergence in Romance possessive DPs is the choice of either the long or the short prenominal possessive in each of the languages, while the semantics of long and short possessives is stable both diachronically and across the three languages we examine. We also argue that the observed diachronic developments are consequences of a pan-Romance rise of a DP grammar. The paper thus contributes to our understanding of the emergence of DP in general and definiteness marking in particular, of the semantico-syntactic architecture of possessive DPs, as well as of the evolutionary divergence and convergence within a language family.

Anaphoric binding in Modern Standard Arabic: A phase-based analysis

AbstractThis article explores the distribution of Arabic reflexive and reciprocal anaphors in various structures as well as the syntactic environments in which such anaphors are (in)admissible. In particular, it examines the binding domains for reflexives and reciprocals and focuses for the most part on the asymmetries between these two types of anaphors in possessive DPs and PPs. It will be shown that the binding facts are better captured by reducing binding domains to phases, that DPs and PPs constitute a phase only when containing a possessive phrase, and that a reflexive and a reciprocal behave differently in such possessive structures in that the latter, unlike the former, undergoes overt movement. Accordingly, it will be argued that reflexive possessives are ungrammatical because they are left unbound in their DP/PP phase, while reciprocal possessives are grammatical since multiple copies of the distributor are created during the derivation due to movement, allowing it to seek an antecedent in the higher vP, its phasal binding domain. For this to hold, Principle A should apply cyclically at the end of each phase; that is, before the complement of the phase head is spelled out.

Suggestive Potential of Language Units in Advertising Texts of International Women’s Glossy Fashion Magazines

We study the language means of logically unreasoned speech impact on the recipient in advertising texts. The relevance of the issue of speech exposure for modern philology is due to technological progress, changing formats of exhortatory communication, research interest in a number of problems of linguistic pragmatics, as well as the formation of a relatively young direction in Russian science - suggestive linguistics. The empirical material of the study is international women's glossy fashion magazines, which are in demand in the domestic media market: “Vogue”, “ELLE”, “Harper’s Bazaar”, “Marie Claire”, “Glamor”, “InStyle”, “Cosmopolitan”. It is shown that a hidden effect on the female target audience with the aim of encouraging buying is provided by a combination of linguistic units of word-formation, lexical, morphological and syntactic levels: some prefix morphemes, certain groups of onyms, terminological vocabulary, abstract nouns and nouns with a “wide-valued” meaning, evaluative adjectives, imperative verbs, personal and possessive pronouns, quantitative-nominal phrases, emotional and interrogative sentences. The distinguished linguistic units explicate certain communicative strategies, create various psychological effects, activate prevailing stereotypes and replace logical argumentation with positive associations.

Wanci dan Binongko sebagai Dialek yang Berkerabat dalam Bahasa Wakatobi

Sound change happens in a language even a dialect sincronically or diachronically will create one or more language or dialect variations. This study aims at:1) to determine the relationship between Wanci and Binongko dialect, 2) to descibe lingistic eviedences which suppoort act of determining the relationship between those dialect. This study is a dialectology research by using quantitative and qualitative method. The source of data in this study was based on field data by doing a direct interview to 487 basic words, 37 possessive phrases dan 16 both transitive and question clauses. The end of this research shows that based on statistic measure by using dialectometry, Wanci and Binongko isolects have relationship in sub-dialect level with percentage about 46.65%. Besides, qualitative analysis by identifying retention and innovation in linguistics features, there is no significant differences between those sub-dialects. Furthermore, linguistics features, they are phonology, morphology and syntax can be applied as evidence in determining the relationship between or among dialects and sub-dialects.

Modeling adnominal possession in multilingual grammar engineering

In this paper we describe insights gained from building an extension to the LinGO Grammar Matrix customization system to cover adnominal possessive phrases. We show how the wide range of such constructions attested in the world's languages can be handled with the typical major phrase types used in HPSG and discuss the value of feature bundling in the multilingual grammar engineering context.

Computational Linguistics Techniques for the Study of Ancient Languages

This paper presents a grammatical comparison of the Minoan language with the proto-Ugric and proto-Hungarian languages. Recent research showed that these languages are closely related, but this paper presents a novel grammatical comparison. The grammatical comparison shows the Minoan language to have an agglutinative type of grammar, with a CVCV type root word structure. The Minoan language also features assimilation between the word roots and the suffixes and a possessive phrase structure that is similar to that in Hungarian.

POLA SINTAKTIS LAKON JAKA SUKARA

The history of Malay language has been going through a long way. Kridalaksana (1991:5) divided the development period of Malay language into four: the Melayu Kuna era (the 7th-14th century CE), the Melayu Klasik/Tengahan era (the 14th-18th), the Melayu Peralihan era (the 19th), and the Melayu Baru era (the 20th century). The Betawi language is the only Malay language that existed in Java Island. Dullaurier, as quoted by Hollander (1983;1984), said that the Malay language is divided into two groups: Malay language Malaka accent and Betawi accent (Muhadjir, 1999:21). In this research, the script of Lakon Jaka Sukara became the data source to find the characteristic features of Malay Betawi language syntax that is written in the script. Lakon Jaka Sukara is one of the scripts assumed to have been written by the Betawi people. In this case, the script of Lakon Jaka Sukara will be analyzed in its syntactic pattern. The research of the Betawi language writing variety, especially the ancient script has rarely been done. That case became important for this research to be conducted. After seeing the whole script, there is syntactic patterns that became the characteristic features of the writing variety of the Betawi language. That syntactic pattern is that there is construction property or possessive phrase, collocation [kasi], [beri], or [kerja] that is followed by verbs, construction [apa] that is followed by nouns, construction [barang] that is followed by [di mana], construction [pun] that is in front of male pronouns, and construction [pun] that is on the back of female pronouns.

Agreement with the internal possessor in Chimane*

AbstractThe paper examines a type of clausal construction in Chimane (or Tsimane’, unclassified, Bolivia) in which possessors which are apparently internal to patient- or recipient-like possessive phrases can control object agreement on the verb. Various aspects of the construction point to an analysis in which the internal possessor is doubled by an external representation or ‘proxy’ in the clause which mediates the agreement relation between the possessor and the verb. The construction bears some resemblance to external possessor constructions, albeit with the added complication that the possessor itself remains internal to the possessive phrase while its argument function is borne by the external proxy. The paper examines features of the construction and contrasts it with similar or related phenomena which have been identified in other languages.

Reflexivity in Two Zhuang Dialects

AbstractThis paper provides a comparison of two closely related dialects of Zhuang that have two very different anaphoric systems. One of the dialects, Mashan Zhuang, allows locally bound pronouns and additionally employs a complex anaphor, whilst the other dialect, Qinzhou Zhuang, has only a bare self which licenses reflexivity across the board. A more detailed analysis of the internal DP structure shows that the distribution and the possibility of being able to act as a reflexive licenser of the various reflexive forms can be explained by differences in the necessity for having a filled FP layer. A closer look at possessive phrases provides further evidence for assuming two different structures for pronouns in these two dialects. Contrary to appearances, then, also the pronoun in Mashan Zhuang provides the complexity an element needs to act as a reflexive‐licenser.

Le ton dans le système pronominal du bissa barka

This paper presents an introductory overview of the pronominal system in Bissa Barka, an Eastern Mande language spoken in south-east Burkina Faso and northern Ghana. Primary focus is placed on the tonal behaviour of the pronouns. The paper begins with a discussion of the number of level tones represented in the language, including a summary of past tonal research. Next, it presents the two sets of personal pronouns used in the language. The tonal behaviour of each of the personal pronouns is presented, along with the tonal behaviour of the pronouns in a possessive phrase, and the tonal behaviour of the logophoric pronoun. The paper ends with a discussion of the four tonal processes identified in the pronominal system including a floating H tone, L tone spread, final falling tone and a restriction of L tone followed by a L tone.

The Spanish doubled possessive construction from a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract This paper presents a cross-linguistic analysis of the Old and American Spanish doubled possessive construction, in which the possessor is doubly marked in a nominal phrase by means of both a third person prenominal possessive pronoun and a prepositional possessive phrase (su casa de Juan ‘lit. his house of John’). This construction is contrasted, in particular, with the French clitic possessive doubling construction (son livre à lui ‘lit. his book to him’) and the Germanic possessor doubling construction (dem Vater seine Katze ‘lit. the father his cat’), showing that the properties of the Spanish structure significantly differ from those of the French and Germanic patterns. A previous view of its typological status whereby the Spanish construction is related to the formal expression of inalienable possession in other languages is further critically discussed, and it is proposed instead that the prenominal possessive in the Spanish doubled possessive construction belongs to the class of evaluative possessives.

From double to dependent marking? An investigation of possessive constructions in Caucasian Urum

AbstractSpeakers of the Turkic variety Caucasian Urum use different strategies for morphologically marking attributive possessive relations. This article presents the results of an experimental study conducted in Tbilisi with the aim of revealing if speakers systematically differentiate in their use of possession markers, and if so, if this is influenced by internal factors such asalienabilityof the word andcomplexityof the phrase. Furthermore, the speakers’ ages were taken into account. Results showed that in possessive constructions, it is especially the head-marking possessive suffix that is occasionally omitted. Post-hoc analysis showed the unexpected influence ofalienabilityon single NP’s possessive marking, even in non-possessive constructions. The results lead to the assumption that the process of constructing possessive phrases is highly influenced by the contact language, Russian.

Possessive phrases as definite expressions in Tupí-Guaraní languages: the role of the R-morphology

O estudo investiga a sintaxe de sintagmas possessivos em línguas da família Tupí-Guaraní, considerando em particular a hipótese de que a chamada morfologia-R(elacional) denota uma descrição definida, induzindo efeito de definitude. Assumindo a Hipótese-DP, argumenta-se que a morfologia-R no nome que denota o possuidor codifica lexicalmente o núcleo D, por meio de uma relação de agreement, que licencia o possuidor, e permite incluir as línguas TG no grupo de línguas do tipo D(eterminante) G(enitivo), em oposição às línguas do tipo A(djetivo) G(enitivo).

A Phase-based Approach to Possessor-subject Possessee-object Sentence in Chinese

Possessor-subject possessee-object sentence is a particular construction with unique features in Chinese. Many studies have been carried out regarding its derivation and the status of the different nouns in the construction, i. e., the possessor, the possessee and the whole possessive phrase. It remains controversial whether Chinese Topic is base-generated or derived through movement. Based on the Phase Theory of Minimalism, this paper re-examines some Chinese possessor Topic Constructions. It is proposed that before the possessor movement the possessor and the possessee are base-generated in the same DP. When this DP is not in the edge position of a Phase, that is, not in Spec-CP or Spec-v*P, the possessor can move to the Topic position. Namely, the possessor is moved to its final landing site (i. e. Spec-TopicP) from inside the possessive phrase, and the reason for its movement lies in the need for the checking of Topic feature. Otherwise, owing to the violation of the Specifier Condition, the derived construction will be ill-formed. As to T’s EPP feature, we propose that it is checked and eliminated via long-distance agreement by the in-situ possessor phrase. This new perspective provides evidence for the hypothesis that Chinese Topic is derived through movement.

The Determiner Phrase Internal Structure in ngêmbà

This paper investigates the internal structure of the Determiner Phrase (DP) in ng«»mba, a Grassfields' Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, Central Africa. It is argued in this paper that ng«»mba exhibits a head first structure and the surface order of D-elements is the mirror image of their merged order. This linear order is derived via successive roll-up movements of the different DP internal constituents. The determiner or determiner-like units of language are generated in a position to the left of the head noun and the demonstrative determiner occupies the head D of DP. To account for the derivation and the agreement relation between the proximate (PROX) or the distal (DIST) particles, I postulate for the existence of a functional projection (FP) headed by the PROX/DIST particles above NumP. When the noun and the head of FP merge, the noun phrase is moved to Spec-FP and the agreement relation between the noun and the PROX/DIST particles is established under Spec-Head configuration. With regard to the number morphology, I assumed that the number prefix occupies the head of the functional projection NumP located above NP. When the demonstrative and the possessive co-occur in within the DP-complex in ng«»mba, the linear order is derived via successive roll-up movements. The noun first merges with the number prefix to form NumP; when NumP merges with the possessive phrase, NumP moves to Spec-PossP; after, when PossP merges with the functional projection heading the proximate or the distal particles, PossP also moves to Spec-FP and finally, when FP merges with DP, FP in turn moves to Spec-DP to yield the right linear order.